XL Foods testing not stringent enough, expert says

Matt McClure, Calgary Herald09.30.2012

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says its list of stores and products affected by the potential E. coli beef contamination from XL Foods is so long that the best advice to consumers is to ask when buying beef where it came from.

CALGARY — The procedures XL Foods Inc. was following to prevent tainted meat from reaching store shelves may have satisfied Canadian inspectors, but they didn’t match the industry norm and were less stringent than what American regulators now say is needed to protect consumers.

And in the wake of the country’s largest ever beef recall, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency conceded Monday it was a mistake not to require companies to analyze test results for a potentially-fatal bacteria to ensure tainted product wasn’t slipping through undetected.

“We didn’t think that that was something that would have been useful,” Richard Arsenault, the agency’s director of meat inspection, told Postmedia News.

“We now know that it is and we’re going to change it.”

While the embattled agency promised improved oversight, Alberta’s other major meat packer said it may increase production at its High River plant to handle some of the growing backlog of beef cattle in the province while XL Foods’ plant in Brooks is shuttered.

Mike Martin, a spokesman for Cargill Inc., said the company may start operating its facility an additional day this week, a move would allow it to process about one-fifth of the slaughter capacity lost when CFIA pulled the Brooks plant’s licence last week due to continuing concerns about food safety controls.

Much of the 1.3-million kilograms of meat the company has voluntarily recalled from the market came from cattle slaughtered Aug. 23 and further processed at the plant on four days that followed. That’s a period during which CFIA official have since discovered the company had a spike in positive test results for E. coli 157:H7.

Industry standards dictate that when a 375-gram sample from a 1,000-kg container of trim destined for ground beef tests positive, that lot is diverted for use in cooked products or destroyed.

But if there is a sudden increase in positive tests in a batch of lots or on a particular day, it’s a warning sign contaminated product isn’t being caught, an industry expert says.

“There is no guarantee any of the meat is safe when you have a heightened level of positives,” said the expert, who spoke to the Herald on the condition he not be identified.

“You can cook it into chili or dump it in a landfill, but you should not be sending any of it to market without further testing.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Inspection Service published voluntary guidelines in May that suggested meat packers need to divert or destroy all trim produced in a batch or on a day if five per cent of it tests positive for the bacteria.

A 2010 survey by FSIS of the 33 largest meat packers south of the border found that nearly two-thirds were already following this practice. A spokesman for Cargill Inc. said Monday the industry giant has been following the five per cent guideline for more than three years at all its plants, including the High River facility.

But according to a independent audit done for XL Foods in May, the plant in Brooks was diverting product only if more than 10 per cent of a batch tested positive or more than 20 per cent of a day’s production was found to be tainted.

CFIA’s in-depth review of the XL plant began Sept. 13 after U.S authorities intercepted contaminated shipments trim at the border for the second time in nine days and banned any further exports indefinitely. The review found that even these less rigorous protocols were not being followed by the company, allowing potentially tainted meat to end up on restaurant tables and grocery shelves.

“While containers of meat testing positive for E. coli 157:H7 were properly handled, a small number of containers produced before and after the contaminated product were not always diverted from the fresh meat line,” an agency summary said.

In the course of their recent review, CFIA inspectors also found that the company’s sampling protocols were not being followed.

The outside audit of the plant by Silliker Inc. in May found that sampling of trim product was “inconsistent” with the standard that 60 pieces be taken from each tested lot.

Those results from earlier were posted on XL’s website, but inspection agency officials have said they were unaware of its existence until “recently.”

Neither CFIA nor the Edmonton-based company responded by Monday to numerous written queries the Herald has submitted since the agency suspended the Brooks facility’s licence Thursday, including questions about other tainted product the agency has found previously at an XL subsidiary.

Records show that in a one-month-period in the fall of 2010, inspectors detained or disposed 11 shipments of contaminated beef trim at XL Meats Inc., a facility in Calgary’s southeast that processed slaughtered carcasses.

In April 2011, beef at the plant was also seized after it was found to be tainted.

It’s unclear if that product was slaughtered at the Brooks plant. It’s also not known if it evaded detection by the company’s own testing before it was caught by CFIA staff.

Despite having more than 46 inspectors providing oversight at the facility, the first indications of the recent problems didn’t come to CFIA’s attention until Sept. 4., when it learned of positive test results by American authorities at the border. That same day, its own inspectors had a positive E. coli test in a shipment sent from the Brooks facility to a small plant in Calgary.

“Those first positives ought to have been a sign to the agency of the potential for massive contamination,” the anonymous expert said.

“They should have demanded that XL show them all the test results for products from the same days immediately.”

Instead, the agency’s timeline indicates inspectors waited two days to formally request results and gave the company a further four days to comply. As it was, XL didn’t supply all the data to CFIA until Sept. 11, the same day four people in Edmonton fell sick from eating contaminated steak that Alberta’s health authority now confirms came from the troubled plant.

In the House of Commons on Monday, the Liberals and NDP tore a strip off the Conservative government over the safety of Canada’s meat supply.

Malcolm Allen, the New Democrat MP from Welland, Ont., said the government’s cuts to CFIA’s budget and its policies of self-regulation for the industry had compromised public health.

“In this case, XL failed to protect food safety,” Allen said.

“By the time CFIA inspectors got involved, the contamination had spun out of control.”

Liberal leader Bob Rae drew a direct line between XL Foods’ problems and several cases of E. coli poisoning in Alberta.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay, standing in for Prime Minister Steven Harper, said Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz was on the job and “has held officials accountable” on the issue.

While the XL facility remains closed, the province’s feedlot operators expect the number of cattle crossing the border for slaughter will increase.

“They (operators) have a perishable commodity,” said Russ Evans of the Alberta Cattle Feeders’ Association.

“You’ve got limited time to market those animals once they’re ready.”

Ellen Goddard, an agricultural economist at the University of Alberta, said the uncertainty about cattle prices may continue, even if the XL plant reopens, because some of the company’s suppliers forced to find a different market for their product may not return to the Brooks processor.

“This will cause some destabilization in the industry for a while, which I think will be problematic,” Goddard said.

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